Weather is the second largest cause of nonrecurring congestion, accounting for 25 percent of all such delays. Every year motorists endure one billion lost hours due to delays caused by snow, rain, ice, wind, and fog. But bad weather is more than aggravating — it’s dangerous! Weather plays a role in 24 percent of all crashes — approximately 1.5 million of them. Each year, on average, 7,130 people were killed and 673,000 were injured between 1995 and 2008 in weather-related crashes. The annual economic costs of these deaths and injuries is estimated at $42 billion. Furthermore, according to a report done by IHS Global Insight for the American Highway Users Alliance, the economic costs of disruption from a single snow storm can be colossal — in some states, lost wages, retail sales, and tax revenues can total $300-$700M in just one day. In addition, state and local agencies spend more than $2 billion per year on snow and ice removal alone. The good news is that these problems are surmountable thanks to rapid changes in technology and advances in communications which are revolutionizing the vehicle and infrastructure environments. The U.S. DOT’s intelligent transportation systems (ITS) program is exploring new enabling platforms that will allow Road Weather managers to manage traffic and fleets, and motorists to make better decisions. In addition, it will provide new vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications that will conceivably add millions of mobile sources of weather data on the road — where people drive. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting